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Literary Terms for English III IB: Literature
- Allegory: A narrative in which the characters, behavior, and even the setting demonstrates multiple levels of meaning and significance. Often a universal symbol or a personified abstraction
- Alliteration: The sequential repetition of a similar initial sound, usually applied to consonants, usually in closely proximate stressed syllables
- Allusion: A literary, historical, religious, or mythological reference in a literary work
- Antithesis: The juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel words, phrases, grammatical structure, or ideas
- Assonance: The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, usually in successive or proximate words
- Attitude: The sense expressed by the tone of voice or the mood of a piece of writing; the author’s feelings toward his or her subject, characters, events, or theme. It might even be his or her feelings for the reader
- Colloquial: A term identifying the diction of the common, ordinary folks, especially in a specific region or area
- Connotation: The implied, suggested, or underlying meaning of a word or phrase
- Consonance: The repetition of two or more consonants with a change in intervening vowels
- Dialect: The language and speech idiosyncrasies of a specific area, region, or group
- Diction: The specific word choice an author uses to persuade or convey tone, purpose or effect
- Elegy: A poem or prose that laments, or meditates upon the death of a person
- Euphemism: An indirect, kinder, or less harsh or hurtful way of expressing unpleasant information
- Exposition: The interpretation or analysis of a text. Also, the opening section of a narrative or dramatic structure in which characters, setting, theme, and conflict can be revealed.
- Extended metaphor: A series of comparisons within a piece of writing, or one long drawn out comparison.
- Figurative Language: Language with levels of meaning expressed through figures of speech such as personification, metaphor, simile, etc.
- Flashback: An earlier event is inserted into the normal chronology of the narration
- Genre: A type or class of literature, such as epic, narrative, poetry, biography, history
- Hyperbole: Overstatement characterized by exaggerated language, usually to make a point or draw attention
- Imagery: Any sensory detail or evocation in a work to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object. Involves any or all of the five senses.
- Irony: The contrast between what is stated explicitly and what is really meant. The intended meaning is often the opposite of what is stated, often suggesting light sarcasm.
- Jargon: Specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group
- Juxtaposition: The location of one thing adjacent to another to create an effect, reveal an attitude, or accomplish some other purpose
- Metaphor: One thing pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy. An implicit comparison or identification of one thing with another, without the use of like or as.
- Mood: A feeling or ambience resulting from the tone of a piece as well as the writer/narrator’s attitude and point of view. It is a “feeling” that establishes the atmosphere in a work of literature or other discourse.
- Motif: A recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object or situation used throughout the work to unify the message
- Narrative: A mode of discourse that tells a story of some sort and it is based on sequences of connected events, usually presented in a straightforward, chronological framework
- Onomatopoeia: A word capturing or approximating the sound of what is described. The purpose of these words is to make a passage more effective for the reader or listener.
- Oxymoron: A figure of speech that combines two apparently contradictory elements
- Paradox: A statement that seems contradictory but which reveals a deeper or higher truth
- Parallel Structure: The use of similar forms in writing for nouns, verbs, phrases, or thoughts. In prose, recurrent syntactical similarity where several parts of a sentence or several sentences are expressed alike to show that their ideas are equal in importance.
- Personification: Treating an abstraction or nonhuman object as if it were a person by endowing it with human features or qualities
- Point of View: The relation in which a narrator/author stands to a subject of discourse. Requires the reader to establish the historical perspective of what is being said.
- Prose: The ordinary form of written language without metrical structure in contrast to verse and poetry
- Realism: Attempting to describe nature and life without idealization and with attention to detail
- Rhetorical Question: A question that is asked simply for the sake of stylistic effect and is not expected to be answered
- Sarcasm: A form of verbal irony in which apparent praise is actually critical. Can be light, and gently poke fun at something, or it can be harsh and mean
- Satire: A literary work that holds up human failings to ridicule and censure
- Setting: The combination of place, historical time, and social situation that provides the background in a literary work.
- Shift: A change or movement in a piece resulting from an epiphany, realization, or insight gained by the speaker, a character, or the reader.
- Simile: A direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, using the words like or as
- Style: The manner in which a writer combines and arranges words, shapes ideas, and utilizes syntax and structure
- Symbolism: Use of a person, place, thing, event, or pattern that figuratively represents or “stands for” something else
- Syntax: The way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. Basically, sentence structure.
- Theme: The central or dominant idea or focus of a work. The statement a passage makes about its subject.
- Tone: The attitude the narrator/author has toward the subject and theme. Based on particular stylistic devices employed by the author.
- Voice: The acknowledged or unacknowledged source of the words of the story; the speaker’s or narrator’s particular “take” on an idea based on a particular passage and how all the elements of the style of the piece come together to express his/her feelings.